Approaches to Culture in Mainstream Social Psychology and in Early Cross-Cultural Psychology 35As a consequence of its tendency to privilege considera-
tions emphasized in European-American cultural contexts,
psychology in many cases has focused on research concerns
that have a somewhat parochial character, as Moscovici
(1972) has argued in appraising the contributions of social
psychology:
... The real advance made by American social psychology
was...inthefact that it took for its theme of research and for
the content of its theories the issues ofits ownsociety. Its merit
was as much in its techniques as in translating the problems of
American society into sociopsychological terms and in making
them an object of scientific inquiry. (p. 19)
In proceeding with a set of concepts that are based on a rela-
tively narrow set of cultural experiences, psychological re-
search then has tended to formulate theories and research
questions that lack adequate cultural inclusiveness and instead
are based on the experiences of highly select populations.
Summary
Despite its concern with social aspects of experience and
with units of analysis, such as groups, that are larger than in-
dividuals, social psychological inquiry has tended to down-
play cultural factors. This downplaying, as we have seen,
reflects in part the field’s tendency to give weight both to sit-
uational and individual difference considerations, while ac-
cording no independent explanatory force to cultural factors.
Equally, it reflects the field’s embrace of natural-science
models of explanation, which emphasize generality as the
hallmark of a successful explanation and controlled experi-
mentation as the most adequate approach to scientific inquiry.
Finally, in both its sampling practices and in its consideration
of research questions, social psychology has privileged a
middle-class European-American outlook that gives only
limited attention to the perspectives and concerns of diverse
cultural and subcultural populations.
Early Research in Cross-Cultural Psychology
Although cultural considerations have tended to be accorded
little importance in social psychological theory, there exists a
long-standing tradition of research in cross-cultural psychol-
ogy that has consistently focused attention on them. The
scope of work in cross-cultural psychology is reflected in the
vast body of empirical research that has been conducted.
Empirical work from this perspective is extensive enough
to fill the six-volume first edition of the Handbook of Cross-
Cultural Psychology(Triandis & Lambert, 1980), as well as
numerous textbooks and review chapters (e.g., Berry, Poor-
tinga, Segall, & Dasen, 1992; Brislin, 1983).
Research in cross-cultural psychology shares many of the
conceptual presuppositions of mainstream psychology—
which explains, at least in part, why it has not fundamentally
posed a challenge to the mainstream discipline (see discussion
in Shweder, 1990; J. G. Miller, 2001a). These assumptions in-
volve a view of culture as an independent variable affecting
psychological processes understood as a dependent variable.
From such a perspective, culture is seen as affecting the dis-
play or level of development of psychological processes, but
not their basic form—a stance similar to the assumption in
mainstream social psychology that culture has no impact on
fundamental psychological phenomena. Research in cross-
cultural psychology also assumes an adaptive approach to cul-
ture that is consonant with the view of the environment
emphasized in mainstream psychology. Naturally occurring
ecological environments are viewed as presenting objective
affordances and constraints to which both individual behavior
and cultural forms are adapted.
A major thrust of work in cross-cultural psychology has
been to test the universality of psychological theories under
conditions in which there is greater environmental variation
than is present in the cultural context in which the theories
were originally formulated. Brief consideration of early
cross-cultural research in the traditions of culture and person-
ality, culture and cognition, and individualism-collectivism
highlights both the groundbreaking nature of this work as
well as the limited extent to which it challenges the core the-
oretical presuppositions of the mainstream discipline.Culture and PersonalityThe research tradition of culture and personality constituted
an interdisciplinary perspective that generated great interest
and inspired extensive research throughout the middle years
of the twentieth century (e.g., LeVine, 1973; Shweder, 1979a,
1979b; Wallace, 1961; J. W. Whiting & Child, 1953; B. B.
Whiting & Whiting, 1975). Although many of the classic as-
sumptions of this perspective were subject to challenge, and
although interest in this viewpoint diminished after the
1980s, work in culture and personality has served as an im-
portant foundation for later work on culture and the develop-
ment of self.
Some of the earliest work in the tradition of culture and
personality adopted a critical case methodology to test the
generality of psychological theories. For example, in a clas-
sic example of this type of approach, Malinowski tested the
universality of the Oedipus complex against case materials
from the Trobriand Islands (1959). In contrast to the Freudian